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And then this happened...

And Then This Happened...

An inconsequential collection of insignificant happenings from the past.

Saturday, March 10, 1906 Los Angeles Herald

I do not want to be embalmed. I would hope that this (being falsely proclaimed dead, I mean) couldn't happen today but it still makes me wonder why there is a need for embalming today.  We have refrigeration now and even though the body is dead, it seems pretty nasty to poke and prod and inject a bunch of chemicals.  

Here's an interesting article about the practice, from Alternet.

 

And this from the same day.....

I love the Hotel Alexandria.  It's been through a roller coaster from over-the-top extravagance, with the famed million dollar carpet in the Palm Court, to flop-house status, and now it's rising again to become an integral part of the rebirth of the Historic Core in downtown Los Angeles.  I wonder how many other people have fallen from the windows or roof throughout the years.  At this point in time the hotel was only about a month old.

The large oriental rug in the lobby was called the “million-dollar carpet”, because there was purportedly a $1 million worth of business done there every day.[8] It was there that D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks met in 1919 to form United Artists. U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson,[8] and many foreign dignitaries, also stayed at the hotel while visiting Los Angeles.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Court_(Alexandria_Hotel)
Palm Court ballroom as it appears today.

Palm Court ballroom as it appears today.

The Palm Court, also known at other times as the Franco-Italian Dining Room,[2] the Grand Ballroom and the Continental Room,[3] is a ballroom at the Hotel Alexandria in downtown Los Angeles, California. In its heyday from 1911 to 1922, it was the scene of speeches by U.S. Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson and Gen. John J. Pershing. It is also the room where Paul Whiteman, later known as the “Jazz King”, got his start as a bandleader in 1919, where Rudolph Valentino danced with movie starlets, and where Hollywood held its most significant balls during the early days of the motion picture business. Known for its history and its stained-glass Tiffany skylight, noted Los Angeles columnist Jack Smith called it “surely the most beautiful room in Los Angeles”.[4] The Palm Court was designated as a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM#80) in 1971.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Court_(Alexandria_Hotel)
 
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